They are still used to separate that expression, to make the expression stand out from the rest of the text. Surely, if I set a quote in italics, I mean this to

They are still used to separate that expression, to make the expression stand out from the rest of the text. Surely, if I set a quote in italics, I mean this to be read in a distinctive voice by an aural presentation. (This is the entire point of separating it by a distinctive type style. I'm actually somewhat alarmed that this isn't the case.) Edit: There's a clear meaning to the use of distinctive type styles. I don't see an intrinsic value in pretending and that there is no such intended meaning and that there should be an artificial separation, rather than generalizing on presentation styles. Edit #2: In Antiqua, italics isn't just oblique text, it's an entirely different script. So what is the use case and the intended meaning of using a different script? Isn't this more conceptual than just using a fancy visual presentation style, which may be happily ignored in any other representation as there's probably no intended meaning to this?